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Chapter 35: What Hath Night to Do with Sleep?
CHÂTEAU COUTHOVE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
April 1918
Laura’s sleeping mind registered that the tempo of distant firing had increased just as a bell began ringing below, and she was out of bed before she came properly awake. “Up, Pim,” she said, already dressing. “They’ll want every pair of hands.”
There were violet smudges under Pim’s eyes, and her newly shorn hair stuck up round her head like dandelion fluff. She rolled to her feet. Laura watched her sidelong, worried. Pim had never seen a hospital ward during a push. She was unprepared for what was going to happen.
When they hurried downstairs, they found the hospital in a ferment: Jones in the operating theater, arranging his scalpels; Mary intent and bustling. Hurtling past, she called, “Triage, Iven, for now, and keep Shaw with you.”
Ambulances were already sweeping up the drive. A glance outside showed the orderlies pulling out men wrapped in dirty blankets. Laura and Pim went out to the carriage house. The orderlies carried them in and laid them down, and suddenly Laura was too busy to think at all.
Time was reduced to a series of images, each etched sharply in her mind: A man grinning despite a thigh laid open; he knew he’d live and get a ticket home out of it. A man gray-white, his head lopsided. Patient after patient. Mary directed the orderlies with their stretchers, so that the men in each row touched without a break.
“—Put him here.”
“No, we can’t save the foot—”
“Water, for God’s sake, Sister,” said a man on the floor.
Slit boots piled up in heaps beside the stretchers. Orderlies went by with buckets of soapy water to wash the yellow-nailed feet. Laura went from man to man, examining, comforting, deciding who needed emergency surgery and who could wait. “Here!” she called. “A lung, here, hemorrhaging.” The man was swept up and taken away.
A voice, urgent: “Sister, Sister, what do I do? This one’s brain came off with the bandage. I put it in a bucket.”
She gave the man morphine. “But Laura, isn’t that too much?” whispered Pim. Laura didn’t answer and Pim fell silent. The patient’s breath shuddered out of him.
At some point, she grew aware of hands on hers, an acerbic voice speaking.“Doctor,” she said.
Jones said, “Iven, if you looked in a mirror and saw your own face…”
She said, “I know my limit.”
“Has it occurred to you,” said Jones, “that your limit has perhaps diminished after a hearty round of pneumo—” He didn’t finish. Three voices were calling for him, and others for Laura. “Iven, if you collapse, you’ll have me crowing I told you so.”
He strode away.
It was near dawn. The influx had slowed a little. How many hours since the rush began? Laura paused to ease the growing ache in her back, and that was when she heard Pim scream from somewhere outside. Back forgotten, she ran toward the sound. She’d seen patients turn murderous before, the war more real in their minds than anything else. The scream had come from somewhere between the carriage house and the château. Laura stopped in the grass-grown drive, seeking.
A glimpse of stained uniform, and there was Pim, staggering, holding up a man deep in the shadow of the building. Laura ran, managed to get an arm under him before he fell.
As Laura and Pim eased him down between them, she saw his set face.
His blue eyes.
He was wounded. He was staring fixedly at her.
“Laura, I thought it was Jimmy,” Pim was gasping. “I mean, I saw—his hair—he—”
Laura had no time to answer. Her hands were flying over Winter’s body, looking for the source of the blood on his clothes. He was clammy. She found the bullet hole in his left side, small caliber. Perhaps it hadn’t perforated the intestine. Nicked his liver, though, and he’d been bleeding for a while. His pulse was a thread; she didn’t think he’d been strong to begin with. His open eyes were still fixed on her face.
She had a split second to decide what to do.
“Pim, get Jones. Get him now. Only Jones; no one else. All right?”
Pim took one look at Laura’s face and ran off, her feet quick on the grass-grown gravel.
“Laura Iven,” said the man on the ground. His eyes searched her face. “Laura.”
“I’m Laura,” she whispered. “Laura Iven, and Wilfred is my brother.”
Winter looked fleetingly perplexed. “How am I here?” His eyes were half-closed.
“I don’t know. You’re wounded,” said Laura.
The German whispered, “I saw him yesterday. Wilfred.”
Her heart gave a single great thump. “Where?”
Winter didn’t answer. He looked like he was struggling to stay conscious, like a man in a shipwreck, braced for the next wave. Laura bent nearer. “Do you know where he is now?”
Before Winter could speak, Laura heard Pim’s voice behind her: “Just here, Doctor, oh, I think he’s very poorly.”
And Jones’s voice answering, sharper than usual with tiredness, “What’s he doing collapsing in the hedges, though, could he not come inside like a sensible man?” And then he was dropping to his knees beside Laura, handing Pim a pocket torch to hold. “Tell me, Iven,” he said.
“A bullet. Liver, I think,” said Laura, trying to marshal her thoughts. “And he’s—” But Jones had stilled, wary surprise in his tired face, taking in the hazy blue eyes, the stubbly sandy hair. Possibly the irregularity in uniform, and certainly the healed stump. Jones was no fool. He’d heard the story of the elusive German.
Winter seemed to shrink from Jones’s suspicious eye, as if he might be able to stand, slip away, hide himself again in the chaos. But he was at the end of his strength. “It’s all right,” said Laura, although she wasn’t sure it was.
“He won’t get away without help,” Winter said to her suddenly, as though he’d made up his mind to speak while he could and damn all hearers. He caught her wrist in a bony hand. “You have to help him.”
Laura crouched close, heedless of Jones and Pim. “Where is he?”
“He’s with—” Winter tried. “He’s lost—” Perhaps English was failing him in his exhaustion, for he said a single word, the blue eyes burning. “Faland,” he said. Then he fainted.
Laura heard Pim’s small gasp. The light in her hands wavered.
“Christ,” said Jones, harsh. “Young’s German. One arm, rags, accent. What’s he doing here?”
Laura, eyes on Winter’s slack face, whispered, “He came here to tell me that Freddie is alive.” With Faland, with Faland. So when I saw him—I must have seen…
But, Freddie, what happened to you? Why didn’t you come to me?
And then—He knew, didn’t he? That bastard with his violin. He knew. He lied.
Her thoughts stuttered to a halt. Jones had rounded on her. “He said—and you believe him? Iven, he was just saying the first thing to come into his head. Playing on your sympathies.”
“He knew my brother’s name,” said Laura. She was staring at Winter. So was Pim, her face quite blank.
Jones said, “He could have learned it. If I save him, then they’ll come for him. They’ll interrogate him, and hang him.”
Laura shook her head, not disagreeing. But she said, “I need to know what he knows.”
“Your brother’s dead,” said Jones.
She just looked at him.
Almost pleading, Jones said, “Tell me why you believe him. One real damn reason. Iven—give me something.”
Laura said, “A friend told me—someone I trust. That this man came off the battlefield with Freddie’s things. What he knows—I need to know too, Jones, I have to.”
Jones ran a hand over his stubbled face. He didn’t ask why she’d not said anything about this before. “Iven, this can’t end well.”
Laura knew it. It was one thing to be careless with herself, but this was a risk to people who had not asked to be endangered, people who trusted her, and to whom she had a responsibility. She still didn’t hesitate. “Please.”
Jones nodded slowly, eyes fastened on her face. “All right, then, Iven. All right. We’ll get him into surgery. Shaw, could you—?”
But Pim was already running across the grass, and a moment later two orderlies came with a stretcher. Pim was still with them. Her eyes met Laura’s, a long look. But Pim, voluble Pim, did not say a word.
· · ·The orderlies took Winter, still unconscious, into the X-ray room and then into surgery, where Jones and Laura faced each other, alone over his unconscious body. Jones’s hands were steady as he laid out his instruments, but his voice was harsh. “Iven, you say he brought in your brother’s things—but you know he could easily have got them off a corpse. He could be a madman. The area is absolutely teeming with mad—” He broke off. “He said ‘Faland,’ didn’t he? This man you think is the fiddler. The legend, the charlatan?”
She was arranging the mask, the cotton for the ether, counting Winter’s pulse. “I saw Freddie,” she said.
“What?” said Jones.
“That night I spent with Pim and Mary. In Faland’s hotel. That I told you of. I thought I saw Freddie that night. In the crowd. I thought—I thought he was a fever-dream. Perhaps he wasn’t.”
“Or perhaps he was, and you are grasping at straws. Iven, I don’t want to see any patient of mine dragged away to be hanged.”
She was silent.
Jones added, “And if it’s discovered we aided him, well, they might hang us too. Or close down Mary’s operation and send her back to England. They’d like to, you know. Replace her with a man.”
“We’ll plead ignorance,” said Laura. “If it comes to that. In the chaos—the fighting. Say we were moving through patients, we were tired, he didn’t speak, we didn’t realize.” She was preparing Winter for surgery as she spoke, cutting away his clothes, swabbing the surgical site.
“You’re taking a risk with all of us,” said Jones.
She was. He didn’t look accusing, but she could see the question in his face: Why, Iven? Tell me why?
The only answer she could think of was one that made her throat close, her hands cramp. One she didn’t want to give. But she owed it to him. She was asking him to go against his own judgment, his own ethics. Asking him to trust her. So she said, in a voice she hardly recognized, counting Winter’s breaths as she spoke: “When the ship exploded in Halifax, I wasn’t at home. I wasn’t in Veith Street, by the docks. I was working. I’d just got a job. Looking after a trio of old ladies. I should still have been at home in bed. My leg hurt, I was limping. I saw the explosion, out of their front window—a flash of light, and a noise, loud enough to crack the glass. It sent me straight to Flanders. I threw myself flat, quivering like jelly, and for—I don’t know—a quarter hour—I couldn’t think. I was back in Brandhoek, with shells incoming. Just useless, paralyzed. The old ladies helped me. Smelling salts, and a warm blanket.” Her mouth twisted in self-derision. “It was only after that—when I was coming round—that I realized what must have happened at home. We lived by the docks, you see. Me and my parents. I looked out the window. I could see the fires already starting to spread. I got up. And went. I couldn’t run, my leg wasn’t so steady. I walked. All the way there. It was—God, sometimes I go to sleep and find myself still walking. Houses flung to matchsticks, sparks falling, fires everywhere. And the screaming. It was just the time when kids walked to school, you know? Mothers were screaming for them. Sometimes they were buried themselves but still screaming.” She swallowed. “I got home and I saw—well, my mother had been at the window. Watching, you see, the ship on fire in the bay. It was quite a spectacle, and of course my father was out there. Trying to put it out. The explosion—it blew in the window glass.” She paused. “Perhaps there was no way I could have saved her. There was so much glass in her eyes. In her face. She hardly had a face anymore. But I keep thinking I might have. If I’d been quicker. Cleverer. If I hadn’t spent a half hour flopping like a fish. So if there’s a chance to save Freddie, I have to take it. I’ve—Jones, I’ve nothing else.”
She fell silent. Felt the world come back slowly. For a moment she’d gone very far away. It was as though that day in Halifax had carved its own place in her mind, and even a careless word was enough to take her back and hold her there, lost. Winter was ready for surgery on the table, if only Jones would…She met his eyes and held her breath.
“All right,” Jones said. “All right.” He started rolling up his sleeve.
“What are you doing?”
He gave her a testy look. “I’m type O, myself. A lot of the units on our shelves were mine. How do you think I found that some blood always worked and other blood didn’t? Mine always did. Now go and get me some tubing, Iven. He needs blood, and we’ve no more jars left.”
Speechless, Laura went. Within minutes, blood was running into Winter, and a little color was coming back into his face. Laura, watching the patient, whispered, “Thank you. I’m not sure why you are doing this. But thank you.”
Jones’s eyes traced the lines of tubing, considered the color of Winter’s face. Finally he said, “Because you asked me to, Iven.”
She didn’t look at him. No, she wanted to say. No, it’s not real, whatever this is. Good things don’t grow in this rotten earth.
Jones huffed. “I can almost hear you being dramatic and you haven’t said a word.”
· · ·They got Winter through surgery, and he woke from the ether still alive but only half-conscious. Of course, now there was the question of where to put him. It wasn’t as if the château was empty. It teemed with nurses, orderlies, doctors, patients, the Belgians who came in every day to cook and do laundry.
They considered hiding him. But finally, Laura said, “What guilty fools we should look if he’s found bleeding in the pantry. The main ward in fresh pajamas will do for now. I don’t think anyone’s up for noticing the Archangel Gabriel with his trumpet after all this, let alone yet another wounded man.”
Jones was still unhappy. “Look,” he said to the dazed Winter, “whoever you are, you are not to speak. Be like those men who come through a bad bombardment; don’t say a damned word, just look vacant, all right?”
The blue eyes flickered; impossible to tell whether he’d understood. “I’ll keep an eye on him, Iven,” said Jones.
“I can—”
Jones said drily, “I am well aware you can. I am not sure you ought.”
She was silent, suddenly aware of stabbing pain in her feet and ankles, her calf cramping, the residual ache in her chest.
Jones said, “Go and sleep for an hour. I’ll tell you if he says anything. You won’t do him or your brother or anyone else any good if you relapse.”
She hesitated. Trust—gratitude—what strange things to feel. “All right,” she said.
Their eyes met. “Get along, Iven,” said Jones, and she went.
Pim was in the foyer.
Her skin was damp with sweat, her uniform stained and sticky, curls of her chopped golden hair escaping her veil. Her eyes were glassy as water. She looked as wrecked as Laura felt. “Come with me,” said Laura, taking her arm. “You are having some rum and a chocolate bar and a few hours’ sleep.”
Pim shook her head. “I— No. No, indeed, Laura. I’m all right. They need me.”
“Now, Mrs. Shaw,” said Laura.
She chivvied Pim up the stairs. At the door of their room, Pim broke free and burst out, “Who are you to give me orders? I know you lied, Laura, didn’t you, when you told me what happened, while you were out searching? You said that you knew for sure Freddie was dead. But you—you didn’t look surprised at all to see that man tonight. You didn’t even look surprised when he said ‘Faland,’ did you? You’ve been telling—telling me to stop looking, and all the time you were—”
“I heard—rumors,” said Laura. “In Poperinghe. But they were so strange, I discounted them. Go inside, for God’s sake.” She closed the door behind them.
“What rumors, Laura?” said Pim.
“Pim, you’re exhausted, you’re—”
“You’re worse off than I am,” retorted Pim, with a ferocity that Laura had never heard from her. “You’ve got cramps again, don’t you? In your leg. And you’re bossing me anyway. And you lied to me.”
Laura, not replying, stripped off her dress, sat down on her bed, undid her garter. The muscle in her right calf was like wood, and her ruined, exhausted fingers were spasming too hard to apply pressure.
“Let me,” said Pim abruptly, kneeling at her feet.
“Pim, I can—”
“Let me help you.” Bitterness in her voice. “Or don’t you trust me, Laura?”
Laura let go and leaned back. Pim had taken off her scarf; her hair stood out in spikes as she began to massage. “And then?” said Pim, not looking up. “Laura, is your brother dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Pim nodded, working away the cramps. “And the patient, the blond man—he’s the one Young told us about. The German.”
Laura felt a flicker of fear. “Pim, please—”
“I won’t tell Young,” said Pim. “I won’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t, Laura.”
Voice thready with weariness, Laura said, “My friend told me about Winter. Told me that Young’s spy was the man who brought my brother’s things down off the Ridge.” Laura faltered then, gritting her teeth through another cramp.
Pim pressed harder. The only thing Laura could see of her was her hands and the top of her golden head. Tears pricked her eyes from the pressure, but the worst of the tension eased. Laura said, “And during the riot, Winter saved me; he pulled me out from under it. Not—he didn’t know who I was. He did it for kindness.” She didn’t mention coincidence, if that’s what it was: the bloody, pointing finger that led her straight to Winter. “I recognized him from my friend’s description—blue eyes, one arm. I asked him if he knew my brother. He didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to think. But then he appeared, wounded, in the hospital, and said Freddie’s name, and that he is alive, and said Faland’s name and Christ, Pim.” Laura heard her own voice go harsh. “Do you think I know anything at all? Any more than you? Winter could be mad, he could be a liar. And if he’s not—then I still don’t understand.”
Pim’s hands faltered, fell away. Then she looked up. “But it will be all right now, Laura, I’m sure of it. You’ll find him.”
“How?” said Laura.
“You will,” said Pim, and somehow her voice made Laura shiver.
“Did you find Faland, Pim?” said Laura. “In Poperinghe? I know you went looking.”
Pim hesitated fractionally. Frowning, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I will. You’ll see. It will be all right now. I know you’re tired, but you must not give up.”
“I’m not giving up, Pim.”
Pim turned away and got undressed, and they each sponged off the worst of the muck and crawled under their blankets, lay in silence. Laura was mortally tired, but wound up like a clock-spring. Apparently Pim was too. “Why are we here?” Pim asked abruptly. Her voice was small.
Laura forced her eyes open. “At Couthove?”
“No,” said Pim. “It’s not— Oh…How did we get here? How did it all come to this?”
Laura didn’t really have an answer, but she found herself saying, haltingly, “I was at a party once, with a great military scholar. He got very drunk. One of the things I remember he said was that the reason the Germans couldn’t call it off, invading Belgium, back in ’14, was that they’d already got their train tables down precisely, and any deviation from the schedule would ruin it.”
“So you think train tables got us into the war?” said Pim, skeptical.
“No,” said Laura. “Or maybe a little. But it’s not just train tables. The whole world’s made up of systems now. Systems that are too big for any one person to understand or control, or stop. Like the timetables. Alliances. Philosophies. And so now we’re here, even though no one wanted to be.”
“Why did God let it happen?” whispered Pim. “I tried to understand—all those days in Halifax, after Nate passed, and I heard Jimmy was missing. I’d go to church and tell myself that God has a plan for each of us. But how can we know?”
“I don’t know,” said Laura. She wouldn’t blurt out the heretical thing she was actually thinking: What is God if not another system?
“I want to hate someone,” said Pim. “But I can’t hate the Germans. Isn’t that strange?”
“No,” said Laura. “Not the men out there. They’re caught in it just as we are. Go to sleep now. I’ll wake you when the shift changes.”
But Laura still couldn’t sleep. And judging by the rustling, Pim couldn’t either. “Come into my bed,” said Laura finally. “I’m cold. There’s enough room.”
It was a measure of both their weariness that Pim—chatterbox Pim—didn’t say a thing, but got up wordlessly and slid under the blankets in her chemise. They curled up together, and Laura put an arm over her, and blew out the lamp. They were asleep in an instant. Laura could not remember the last time she’d been so warm.
